Tuesday, May 20, 2008

Your Marketing

The person you are and the person you want to be can come down to executing on five words:

Make a huge promise: overdeliver.

The vast majority of us think that all we should do is show up [at our jobs, a function or even home], do a task, make some conversation and then everything in our lives will fall into place. the dream will unfold so to speak. We expect others to want to be in our presence. In a general sense, we want more than we are willing to put in.

"A huge promise" is the starting point of belief that you care. It is showing respect, doing what you say you will do every time, being on time, being different, being surprising, showing joy and real love, being consistent and all of that ties into others then believing and knowing how much you care about them. That is why people want to spend time with you. This is exactly what you want others to believe about you. In fact, the delusional already believe it without working towards it. We call those people egotistical.

The delusional believe they are great and spend more time telling people about themselves, more time talking and less listening, and for the most part they tell stories that are hard to believe. They create a story that is hard to connect with and even harder to deliver on. This marketer is not confident and will even occasionally try to create a boring story so nobody will want to pay attention to them. With them it is feast or famine. Watch me, watch me, unless of course there is something real on the line.

"Overdeliver" means to give more than you say you will, which becomes the secret to a great reputation and people wanting to talk about you and with you. It is the secret of word of mouth.

And if you think that this is a straight discussion about businesses then now is a good time to look in the mirror. We are all marketing ourselves with every move we make and every action we take.